Providing and paying for health care:
Falls to the healthy

		Eye on the  Capitol  John Huebscher

Many observers expect 2007 to be a time of serious debate over how to provide and pay for health care in Madison and Washington. Since Catholic teaching holds that health care is a right for all, essential to our responsibility to develop ourselves and participate in life, this is a debate with moral implications. Catholics need to be a part of it.

There is general agreement that health care should be available to all. Still, as with so many issues, "the devil is in the details." This is certainly the case when we start to talk about how to share the financial costs of providing health insurance and care for the needy.

Choosing to go solo

It is true that a sizeable portion of the uninsured are those who choose to do without health insurance. Generally, but not always, such people are younger, in good health, and able to afford the occasional visit to the doctor.

Some argue that they take responsibility for their own health. They don't expect help paying for their health care nor want to be asked to help others pay for theirs.

Principle of solidarity

Such a view is understandable given our free enterprise individualistic culture. But such a view ignores the principle of solidarity - the theme in Catholic teaching reminding us that human life is social and we are connected to each other. Solidarity is the principle we apply in living out the truth articulated by Pope John Paul II: "all are truly responsible for all."

The proposition that each of us should be responsible for our own health care also overlooks the reality of our lived experience. For when we fall ill, we rely on those who are healthy to care for us.

Sick children rely on their parents for care, food, bathing, and the other needs they can't meet on their own. As we age and are laid low by illnesses more serious than the stomach flu or chicken pox, it is healthy professionals and relatives who provide our care and treatment.

Obligations for others

And just as those of us blessed with good health provide care and treatment to those who are sick, so are those blessed with financial resources called upon to help provide the funds to pay for the care and treatment of the sick. For when our turn comes, we may find ourselves unable to fully finance our health care.

Illness doesn't make ethical judgments and getting sick is not a character flaw. Jesus' call to heal those who are sick does not include a "worthiness test." Our proper concern that each be responsible for making good lifestyle choices does not trump our obligation to help those who did not.

In the year ahead, we citizens will be asked to evaluate plans to improve access to affordable health care and insurance. As we do so, we may wish to consider whether reform proposals that ask more of those who are financially and physically well might not be an appropriate way to apply the principle of solidarity and the preferential option for the poor to a vexing policy question.

John Huebscher is executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference.

Catholic schools:
Appreciating their origins, mission

		Diocese of Madison  Office of Catholic Schools  Michael Lancaster  Superintendent of Catholic Schools

January is an important month for American Catholic schools as we prepare to celebrate Catholic Schools Week later this month.

The week is a celebrated by Catholic schools nationwide to commemorate the good work of all our teachers, principals, our students and their families. This year Catholic Schools Week will run from January 28 to February 3.

In order to truly celebrate our schools, we should understand not only the good work that they do currently, but also have an appreciation of their origins and mission.

Rich tradition in U.S.

Catholic schools have a rich tradition and history in the United States. In fact, they pre-date any "public" school by well over 300 years, having been established in the 1500s first by Spanish and then French priests as part of their missions in the New World.

While these mission schools generally taught trades, farming, and European languages to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, first and foremost, their goal was to evangelize, to teach the Catholic faith and spread the Gospel so that all might come to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

This mission of evangelization is an extension of the mission of the universal Church that Christ gave to the remaining 11 apostles before He ascended into Heaven. "Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you. And know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time" (Matthew 28: 19-20).

These mission schools faced many challenges ranging from difficult physical conditions of weather and terrain, to political and military conflicts. In the English colonies, most of which were staunchly Protestant, Catholics faced routine religious persecution. In many colonies, Catholics were not allowed to worship or establish schools.

In Maryland, the colonial leaders went as far as to outlaw Catholic teaching to the extent that no Catholics could be employed as teachers and, if parents employed a Catholic teacher for their children or sent their children to a Catholic school in another colony or country, not only would the parents be fined, but the Maryland authorities would remove the child from the home and place the child with a Protestant family to ensure a Protestant education.

Schools flourished

Despite these and many more difficulties over the years, Catholic schools grew and flourished, often serving the poorest of the poor, providing solid education and firm grounding in the Catholic faith. Today there are nearly 8,000 Catholic schools nationwide serving over 2.3 million students. The Diocese of Madison has 46 Catholic schools serving over 7,700 students.

While our modern Catholic schools are very different in many ways from the early mission schools, they retain the fundamental mission of evangelization, to proclaim and teach the Catholic faith. This is the "raison d'etre," or reason for being, for each and every Catholic school.

The Vatican has reaffirmed this mission many times, but most recently just last year with the publication of "The Holy See's Teaching on Catholic Schools" by Archbishop Michael Miller, the Secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education.

In this short treatise, the archbishop describes and defines the "Five Essential Marks of Catholic Schools." In future articles, I will discuss each of these five marks, how they are strengthened and maintained in our schools and the many benefits that our students, families, and parishes realize.

Thank you for reading and may God bless you.

Triune family:
Families made in the image of God

		A Culture  of Life  Kimberly Hahn

An elderly priest once visited a second grade classroom and asked, "Who can tell me what the Trinity is?"

A young girl, when called on, quietly answered, "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

The priest, whose hearing was impaired, leaned toward her and replied, "I'm sorry, I don't understand."

"You're not supposed to," she quickly rejoined. "It's a mystery."

Mystery of the Trinity

So much about the Trinity is a mystery to us. How can we imagine Someone who has no beginning or who has no end? How do we understand the Being who knows everything, who is everywhere, who has all power?

How has God revealed himself? God is a communion of Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each Person of the Godhead is fully God: holy, wise, just, true, love - so how do we tell them apart?

We are able to differentiate the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by their relations. From all eternity, the Father fathers the Son in self-donating love. The Son, in imitation of the Father, pours himself back to the Father in self-donating love. And the bond between them is more than a spirit of love; it constitutes the very Person of the Holy Spirit.

God's inner life of total self-donation creates an intimate communion of love and life. God is not just loving; he is the very essence of love (see 1 Jn 4:8). He is the source of all life.

Three Persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in one God, this Family of love and life, called man and woman into existence in his image.

Image of Triune God

So man and woman were created in the image of the Triune God, unlike any other creature. They were blessed and commanded to be fruitful - to image God by becoming life-giving lovers.

God did not create man and woman because he was lonely, for "God in his deepest mystery is not a solitude, but a Family, since he has in himself fatherhood, sonship, and the essence of the family, which is love." Rather, as an expression of his life-giving love, the Triune God created us for the joy of creating us and making us life-giving lovers like himself.

As the Vatican II fathers have expressed it, "Man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself." Man and woman were made to reflect God's inner life and love. He graced the first man and woman to reflect his image, both as individuals and in their marriage.

Covenant of marriage

Each time God completed a day of creating living creatures, the refrain was repeated: "And God saw that it was good" until he created man. After he created Adam, the response became, "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good."

Next the Scriptures record, "Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.'" So God created Eve as a helpmate for Adam, a friend and companion in the Garden, man's match.

God gave man and woman to each other in the covenant of marriage. A covenant is not a contract. A contract is an exchange of goods or services to which both parties agree; when the contract has been fulfilled, the relationship does not need to continue. A covenant, on the other hand, is an exchange of persons: I give myself to you, and you give yourself to me. A contract varies as much from a covenant as a man hiring a prostitute differs from a husband marrying a wife.

Kimberly Hahn, mother of six, is co-author of the bestseller Roman, Sweet Home, Our Journey to Catholicism, with her husband Scott Hahn. This column is syndicated by www.OneMoreSoul.com and is reprinted from Kimberly Hahn's book, Life-Giving Love (St. Anthony Messenger Press).